Tag Archives: Christianity

Going to a carol service this weekend? Millions are, this weekend or next. For many it’s the only time they go through the doors apart from weddings or funerals or because they mistake it for a Wetherspoons. But then, which Christmas service do you go to?

Depending on the church in question, it’s often variations on a theme: the Children’s Carol Service, Carols by Candlelight, Traditional Carols, Contemporary Carols… But whichever non-silent night you opt for, there are some hidden histories behind each of them. Here are a few:

MIDNIGHT MASS:
The first liturgy of Christmastide. It’s Christmas Eve, it flows over midnight, there’s a warm shaking of hands, and a lot of warm scarves and coats hopefully too. It’s a lovely occasion, and really, properly feels like Christmas. You need a good dose of incense smell in there too… And it’s pretty much the only time that non-Catholic denominations will call a church service a ‘Mass’.

Then again, it is in the name of Christmas of course. ‘Christ’s Mass’ was one of the earliest formal church services we know about, with some private celebrations happening a a century of so after the Nativity. But it was secret and solemn – before there were even churches to worship in. We know it was celebrated more formally by the late fourth century in Jerusalem, though it’s thought the tradition began further east… so this was on January 5th, the Eastern Christmas Eve, before the Western date of December 25th had fully landed. It took till the twelfth century to become widespread.

BOY BISHOP & THE FEAST OF FOOLS:
Sadly the Reformation took this celebration from us – though it sounded fun. It was the church’s spin on the topsy-turvy celebrations that Roman Saturnalia had started. Just as the Lord of Misrule would lead the chaotic festivities outside of the church, the Boy Bishop was the church’s attempt to join in the fun.

The popular Lord of Misrule reigned from Halloween to Candlemas (31 October to 2 February), while the church’s child equivalent ruled between the church’s two key dates for children: from St Nicholas Day on 6 December to Holy Innocents Day (more catchily named “Childermas”) on 28 December, the day commemorating Herod’s Massacre of the Innocents. Once elected, the Boy Bishop would replace the real bishop, sitting in his seat and dressed in full mitre and robes. He would perform all church ceremonies except Mass – even delivering sermons, while the regular clergy took on junior tasks.

The related “Feast of Fools” was similarly anarchic – generally on New Year’s Day, lower clergy and peasants dressed up as animals, women, or their superiors. Clearly its heathen origins had little place in the church, post-Reformation. The Council of Basle abolished the customs in the fifteenth century, and Henry VIII banned them in England by 1541.

John de Watteville: Mr Christingle

CHRISTINGLE:

Rev John de Watteville came up with a new visual aid on 20 December 1747, at a children’s service in Marienborn, Germany. To help explain Jesus, he lit candles for each child and tied them with red ribbon – to signify the Light of the World and the blood shed for humanity. He concluded with a prayer: “Lord Jesus, kindle a flame in these children’s hearts, that theirs like thine become.”

In 1968, John Pensom of the Children’s Society revived and updated the service. To raise funds, children would donate money and receive an orange in return. Now the orange represents the world, the ribbon wrapped around it in love, while four cocktail sticks – with fruit, nuts, marshmallows, and Jelly Tots – represent the four seasons and fruits of the earth.

The name “Christingle” means “Christ fire” – not to be confused with “Kris Kringle”, which is either an old name for Santa Claus, the name of Richard Attenborough’s character in Miracle on 34th Street, or another name for “Secret Santa” in some parts of the world.

Edward Benson: Mr Nine Lessons & Carols

NINE LESSONS & CAROLS:

Edward Benson was a schoolmaster at Rugby school, arriving soon after it popularized the sport of tiddlywinks. Sorry, rugby. Just checking you’re paying attention. Benson became Bishop of Truro in Cornwall in 1877, and went on to become Archbishop of Canterbury, and to influence Christmas literature by telling his friend Henry James a simple ghost story, developed into festive favourite The Turn of the Screw. In that way that Victorian society people appeared to, Benson left creative successes all over the place: one of his sons went on to write the Mapp and Lucia novels, another wrote the lyrics to “Land of Hope and Glory”. But in terms of Christmas, Bishop Benson had a major impact all on his own.

On Christmas Eve 1880, he put on a new service at Truro Cathedral, ostensibly to lure the drunks from the pubs. Forget that image of sacred solemn singing from innocent choirboys at King’s College, Cambridge… The first Nine Lessons & Carols must have sounded bawdy, after a night in the pub.

At the time, it was feared that folk carols were on the way out, so Benson was also responsible for renewing an interest in the carol and helping preserve its future. He modelled his service on the medieval feast days, when a church would present nine lessons; his choices spanned Old and New Testaments, a bluffer’s guide from original sin to Jesus’ birth. Readings were given by successive church staff from chorister upwards to Benson himself for the closing lesson. Songs include “The First Nowell”, “Good Christian Men Rejoice”, and “O Come, All Ye Faithful” – it would take King’s College, Cambridge’s revival of the service after The Great War to put “Once in Royal David’s City” in its now traditional place at the front of the service.

December 6th! St Nicholas’ Day! Traditionally the day of present-giving in many countries to this day, leaving Christmas for church or family or turkey dinners or what have you. But for many, THIS is the big one.

So as a present from my book Hark! The Biography of Christmas, here’s all you need to know about the St Nicholas, before the Santa Claus…

Nikolaos, to give his Greek name, was born in around 270 to wealthy Greek parents in the busy Mediterranean port town of Patara, living along the coast in Myra in Lycia. Yes, Nicholas began life, like Christmas stuffing, in Turkey.

One story tells that as a newborn, he stood up on the altar for several hours, raising hands heavenwards as if in prayer. Another legend holds that even as a baby, he abstained from breastfeeding for the traditional two fasting days each week (the original 5:2 plan). When he did feed, it was only ever from the right breast, so loyal to God’s right hand was the infant Nicholas.

Saint Nicholas: The Wonder-Worker. One of his best albums.

More historically reported is the early demise of his parents after an epidemic, so the boy moved in with his uncle the bishop, and trained under him as a priest. Nicholas became Bishop of Myra, and attended the Council of Nicaea: crucial in the establishment of the early Christian church. Emperor Constantine invited 1,800 bishops; only 300 bishops attended. One attendee was also a man called Arius who believed that Jesus was created by God, therefore subordinate to Him. Nicholas was so vehemently anti-Arian that it’s said he punched Arius in the face. One legend has it that his peers were so shocked they instantly called for his dismissal as bishop – till Jesus and Mary appeared as visions alongside him, and the bishops for some reason thought better of it and awkwardly consulted their minutes.

With no family that we know of, Nicholas had little use for money he’d inherited, instead opting to give much away to those in need. Word reached Nicholas of a local widower with three daughters, poor business sense, and very little money. Nicholas’ fortunate circumstances were down to his parents’ good investments, so he was inclined to help the man. The fellow needed a dowry to pay for each daughter to be married and their futures secured. Failing that, slavery or prostitution were the only options left.

Nicholas waited till dark and threw a bag of gold through a downstairs window of the house – for the eldest daughter. He repeated his trick for the other daughters, till he was caught by the father. Nicholas swore him to secrecy over his identity as the mystery benefactor, not wanting the world to latch onto his free payouts, but the father couldn’t restrain his gratitude and spread word of Nicholas’ generosity – and presumably his mean aim at basketball.

Nicholas died on December 6th, 343 AD. Tales quickly spread of his generosity. One story had him stopping at an inn to discover that the innkeeper had been slaughtering boys and pickling them in brine, to sell on as ham. Nicholas not only saved three boys but actually reassembled them after the innkeeper’s butchering… according to the legend.

The miraculous tales ensure Nicholas’ sainthood. One had him being rewarded in Jerusalem by the church doors of the Room of the Last Supper; they swung open to greet him as he approached, in possibly the world’s first recorded automatic door.

Nicholas’ tomb became a shrine, particularly to sailors, who took him as their patron saint. They took his tales across the Mediterranean, particularly to Italy, who craved his bones for their shrines. Then to the Netherlands, where nearly 2,000 years on, ‘Sinterklaas’ is still celebrated on December 6th in a big way, with his arrival by sea from, apparently, Spain. Other countries adore him too; in Russia there’s an expression: “If God dies, at least we’ll still have St Nicholas.”

In Northern Europe, St Nicholas’ legends merged with Norse worship of other bearded folk like Odin and Thor. Merging with Odin over time, Nicholas was pictured with full beard and bishop’s robe, flying through the sky on a horse as Odin did.

When the Dutch settlers reached New Amsterdam, which then became New York, they brought the stories with them. Writers like Washington Irving perpetuated their myths, still with generosity and a care for children at the heart of the stories. So children’s books cottoned on, and printed pictures and stories like this:

…where he sat alongside pics of his delivered stockings, complete with birch sticks for whipping children who hadn’t learnt their prayers. Nice. Or naughty. And once Clement Clarke Moore wrote ‘A Visit from St Nicholas’ for his children the day before Christmas Eve 1822 (too late to buy a present, I’m sure), St Nicholas’ future was set. Like jelly. Like a bowful of jelly.

Thing is, Advent technically begins on Advent Sunday, the first of four Sundays leading up to Christmas. So that can be as early as November 27th or as late as December 3rd, as it is this year. We only think of Advent as kicking off on December 1st thanks to the mass-production of Advent calendars, like this one – the first of its kind…

The first commercially available Advent calendar.

Here are windows onto calendars and what came before them…

THE PRE-CALENDAR… Advent was celebrated from at least the fifth century. By the late nineteenth century, Advent wreaths and candles (four candles, ‘andles for forks) were popular across Europe. To this day, many churches light one candle each Sunday through Advent, and some devote each to the patriarchs, the prophets, John the Baptist, and Mary. It’s cheerier than the previous four themes: sermons on death, judgment, heaven, and hell used to feature on the Sundays in Advent.

CHALK ‘EM OFF… Meanwhile at home, before Advent calendars, Protestant German families marked a chalk line each day till Christmas Eve – a bit like caricatures of prison life, but happier.

THE HOMEMADE CALENDAR… began life in the 1850s, each one personalised. One Frau Lang made calendars with sweets on string for her son Gerhard, who loved Advent, probably because he was allowed a sweet a day.

ANOTHER DOOR OPENS… Gerhard grew up and mass-produced Advent calendars from 1908. Around the same time, newspapers offered them as free gifts – so Gerhard upped his game, or his calendars’ days were numbered. Which was kind of the point. Gerhard was the first to add cardboard doors, with a picture or Bible verse behind each.

A NEW START… for Advent in the 1920s, as Gerhard decided that a December 1st start day would save redesigning the calendars each year. From then on, a standardised calendar saw the doors numbered from 1 to 24, and thus reusable year on year.

THE COUNTDOWN STOPS… Rationing ceased production, but the calendars returned after World War II to great acclaim.

I LIKE IKE, IKE LIKES ADVENT CALENDARS… Just as a pic of Victoria and Albert brought the Christmas tree to the United States, President Eisenhower helped spread the Advent calendar in a photo of him giving them to his grandchildren.

ALL I WANT FOR CHRISTMAS IS MY TWO FRONT TEETH… Chocolate joined the calendars in the 1950s. Consumers had a choice between chocolate and Bible verses – guess which sold better?

The Advent Calendar (of the Eisenhowers) that sold the idea to America.

…Yes, once again, a burgeoning Christian custom was no match for festive gorging. And all because of those ridiculous commercial pictures in magazines and newspapers, I mean it’s just typical…

If Halloween’s behind us, it must mean we’re into the holiday season. Alright, our Atlantically-distanced cousins mark it from Thanksgiving, but come on: Halloween, Bonfire Night, Thanksgiving… whatever side of the pond you’re on, it’s one festivity after another this time of year. Like the lorry of sugary black stuff tells us, holidays are indeed coming. Happy holidays, everybody!

Oh, hasn’t that term always bristled? Doesn’t it smack of Christmas-bashing? Of secular season’s greetings and watered-down Wintervals? But here am I – English, God-fearing, Christmas-loving chump that I am – to say that I think I’m happy with ‘holidays’. Happy, if not merry.

Till I researched my Christmas history book, I hadn’t fully appreciated the history of the U.S. holiday season. I knew that Cromwell banned Christmas over here in Blightyland in the 1640s, causing a good decade and a half of no legal Christmas in Britain. But I’d not realised the impact in America.

Caption competition on Have I Got 17th Century News For You

The Puritan Pilgrim Fathers banned Christmas in Boston a few decades later, and unlike in Britain, they didn’t have centuries of Christmas to build on (or knock down). They were banning something that had never had a footfall in the New World, so as a religious festival it never hugely came back, because it was never hugely there. Christmas was celebrated in pockets along the East Coast in the 17th and 18th century, but churches couldn’t agree: Was it a feast day? A fast day? A normal day? Christmas became an excuse for a riotous party, or just a riot.

Scotland had done a similar thing – with no official Christmas holiday from 1560 right up till 1958. That left a gap, so Scotland gained Hogmanay, while North America gained Thanksgiving.

Thanksgiving was celebrated as early as the American Christmas, with new (and hungry) pilgrims grateful for the harvest. Britain had its Harvest Festival, but things grew bigger in the New World – even festivals. It took till 1789 to become official under George Washington, marking the proper start of the ‘holiday season’, which now covers the Christian Christmas, the Jewish Hanukkah, and the African American Kwanzaa. So it makes total sense to be called a holiday season, given the holidays it covers include things like Thanksgiving, that had a foothold before Christmas fully did.

For Thanksgiving to go national as an actual day off, thank nineteenth century magazine editor Sarah Hale: a very creative, innovative and can-do American businesswoman. She wrote to each U.S. President over 26 years suggesting an official Thanksgiving Day (Lincoln finally relented), and also first published ‘Mary Had a Little Lamb’ plus stories by Washington Irving and Edgar Allan Poe in her mag. Oh, and she also printed something else for our Christmas tale: the American reprint of the famous ‘Victoria and Albert and family around a giant German Christmas tree’ picture, which went viral and pretty much created an industry.

To appeal to the American market, Hale’s version of the picture used one of the earliest examples of journalistic airbrushing, removing Victoria’s crown (to make her less royal) and Albert’s moustache (to make him less German). Spot the difference in the above pics, UK vs US… However anti-royalist and xenophobic it sounds, good ol’ Sarah Hale sold the Christmas tree to America – so give thanks to her for a couple of ‘holiday’ customs.

If ‘holiday’ is still sounding anti-religious, it’s worth remembering the word’s religious in origin in any case, being Old English for ‘holy day’. And in fact a century or two ago, ‘Happy holidays’ could have easily meant a Christian greeting to cover Advent, Christmas and New Year into Epiphany… as well as those other non-Christian festivals too.

So I have no problem with ‘the holiday season’. It’s a season of holidays. As for ‘Happy Holidays’… well the backlash against that is perhaps more valid, and more recent. It’s a greeting used at Christmas, instead of ‘Merry Christmas’. I see the point though. What if you’re wishing someone a Merry Christmas, and they’re Jewish, and Hannukah is their thing? Don’t you want to wish them a merry one of those? So Christmas shopping might be labelled ‘holiday shopping’. Perhaps it rankles to the British ear because holidays, for us, are what they call vacations, and are normally summery and as far from Christmas as possible. So is it a language thing then, or a multi-religious thing?

Maybe it’s more that in the U.S., when they say ‘Christmas’ they more often mean the religious Christmas – so when their festive season becomes more multicultural, they pick a new term that’s less religious. Over on our sceptred isle, we’ve been watering down our religion for some time, merrily ticking census boxes that claim us as Christian when really we mean we like the morals we learnt in R.E. forty years ago, and we sing along to Last Night of the Proms. If we’re happy to be labelled Christian without going to church, we’re also happy to label Christmas as ‘Christmas’ when actually we’re no longer celebrating Christ’s mass.

Either way, whether you’re enjoying Thanksgiving, Kwanzaa, Guy Fawkes Night or even Christmas, I know it’s too early and too annoying to wish you Happy Holidays. So I’ll just wish instead it to be as fun a holiday season as King Edward III had in 1348, when he spent Halloween to Candlemas (a.k.a. All Saints Eve to Groundhog Day) – three full months – on a masked animal-skin party in Guildford. I live in Guildford, and can report, it hasn’t changed a bit.

So please forgive while I start to veer towards that festival at the end of the year. You know the one. Crimbo. Xmas. Yule. Saturnalia. Winterval. I’ve already heard some vicars call it ‘the C word’, which hardly seems fair. I guess they get busy.

But we won’t get too snowy just yet. Plenty of time for that when the wind changes.

Instead, a light introduction to the chapters of the book. Each details what I’ve conveniently decreed the 12 dates when Christmas became our current Christmas. So here, exclusively (if that’s what passes for an exclusive nowadays), are the 12 dates ‘n’ chapters…

(Prologue: It’s Norse Yule and quite Games of Thronesy. It’s a story of ice and fire. And winter is definitely coming. There are no dragons but there is a burning log. (Oh, and it’s not so much ‘prologue’ as ‘prologos’, ‘before the Word’ or ‘before Christ’ as the Greeks would call it. Too early for ancient Greek wordplay?)

On my 1st date of Christmas, it’s approx May 20th, 4BC. Jesus is born. In May? Well, shepherds wouldn’t be watching many flocks by night in December. We take a look at all the key players: Mary, the shepherds, the angels, the many-not-three wise men, the non-innkeeper, the non-donkey and King Herod and his wife Doris.

My 2nd date of Christmas is December 17th, 33AD. Saturnalia! Roman festival of gift-giving, turning the world on its head, and general outrageous partying: ancestor of the office shindig. It’s 33AD because post-Christ, Jesus’ followers’ movement muddled in with other Roman religions, from Judaism to Mithraism. Emperor Constantine chose Christianity, and the rest is history. Oh, and at the Council of Nicaea, Constantine met one Bishop Nicholas, so that brings us to our…

3rd date of Christmas: December 6th 343, deathday of Nicholas, Bishop of Myra. He gave out goodies, especially getting 3 bags of gold into 3 stockings by a fireplace (in another life, he’d make a mean NBA basketball player). And he lived in a town called Myra, named after myrrh. In Turkey, which sounds like turkey. You see?! St Nicholas is Christmassier than you thought, even before he becomes Santa Claus (spoiler).

Our 4th date is our first December 25th, in 1213. We zoom in on King John’s epic Christmas feast, including 16,000 hens and 10,000 eels. The medieval Christmas feast ties the season to gorging on birds from crane (chewy) to peacock (pretty but tough) to, oh yes, turkey. Later, even KFC, the Japanese Christmas tradition since the 1970s.

Our 5th date is a day short of a decade later: Christmas Eve, 1223. Francis of Assisi stages the first live Nativity scene, with genuine animals and a stone Mary, Joseph and Jesus. Soon, every fashionable home in Europe has their own crib scene. Meanwhile Francis is busy writing the first carols to be sung not in Latin but local languages – so people finally understand what they’re singing.

Chapter 6 zooms in on Christmas 1643 and those just after – or as Puritans preferred to call it, ‘The old Heathens’ Feasting Day, the Profane Man’s Ranting Day, the Superstitious Man’s Idol Day, the True Christian Man’s Fasting Day…’ – that’s fasting not feasting, folks. Christmas is cancelled. Father Christmas is recruited as a political activist, mince pies became round to get around the law, and ‘the Christmas hoop’ loses the holy family icons, to leave simply mistletoe. Then there’s plum pudding, panto and candy canes – but Christmas is out of fashion. Did the Puritans win?

Our 7th date is one of my favourites. The Silent Night: December 24th, 1818. Some hungry mice, a church organ, a forgotten poem and a few panicked hours on Christmas Eve help create the world’s most performed Christmas song. Plus how Handel’s Messiah was written for Easter, how Jingle Bells was written for Thanksgiving (and became the first song in space, as part of a prank), and why While Shepherds Watched was the only legal carol for a hundred years.

Just four years later, in Chapter 8… now we’re talking. It’s December 23rd 1822 and Dr Clement Clarke Moore has written a poem, absorbing tales from Dutch New Yorkers about their favourite saint, Nicholas. Washington Irving (writer of Rip Van Winkle and Sleepy Hollow and inventor of the words ‘knickers’ and ‘Gotham City’), has brought St Nick into popular fiction. Moore runs with it: “Twas the Night before Christmas…”

December 19th, 1843: a biggie. Dickens stepped out of his home to see street-sellers launch his tale of Scrooge, charity, family, mulled wine and humbugs. The same week, the first Christmas card appeared. The same year, O Come All Ye Faithful appeared. The same decade, Christmas trees and crackers appeared (with sweets in). The new middle classes meant aspiration. The new railways meant far-away work, which meant returning home for Christmas. The new postal system meant cards and parcels and thankyou letters.

Our 10th date is December 24th, 1880 in Truro, Cornwall, as the first Nine Lessons & Carols service lures drinkers out of pubs. Commerce sees window displays, grottos, and a telephonist’s light-up desk inspires coloured Christmas lights. There’s a Christmas truce, a kickabout, and a grumpy corporal Adolf Hitler refusing to join in.

Date 11 is Christmas Day 1932: the first British royal Christmas speech. We’ve a stockingful of early broadcasting joy, from the world’s first ever radio entertainment show (being One Lesson & Carol) to the bumper Radio Times and the Queen’s first TV Christmas message, which was rudely interrupted by a cross line from a police radio, saying: “Joe, I’m gonna grab a quick coffee.”

Finally, our 12th date is Christmas Day 1941, as Bing Crosby debuts White Christmas just days after Pearl Harbor. There are the strange summer origins of Let It Snow! Let It Snow! Let It Snow! and The Christmas Song. There’s John McClane. There’s a film of a Yule log that repeats every 17 seconds. There’s Alan Partridge in a Christmas jumper. There’s the unwatchable Star Wars Holiday Special. There’s Bob Geldof bumping into Gary Kemp outside of an antiques shop and starting Band Aid.

Then there’s today – somehow the summation of all this. Well, I say ‘today’. Today it’s a sweltering August Bank Holiday Monday. So enough about Christmas. For now…

Two and a half years since I posted here about the end of Miranda and Not Going Out – so what’s happened since?

Well Not Going Out has come back, in a new scenario. We’re writing the umpteenth series of it now. As for Miranda, there are rumours in the paper every few weeks that it’s coming back, every time one of the cast breathes and it sounds a bit like ‘We’re in talks’. Who can say…

As for me, I’ve been gigging a-plenty (including a new medically biographical stand-up show I’m performing at Camden Fringe this weekend as I write this – tickets available folks! Come on down, Sat 26th/Sun 27th Aug 2017…).

And I’ve been writing for more TV, including TFI Friday, Buble at the BBC, The BBC Music Awards, anda rollercoaster series of Top Gear: a crazy five months under the spotlight of the tabloids, culminating in everyone on the bus voicing opinions on the precise ideal volume of Chris Evans’ voice/T-shirt. I arrived with Chris and left with him. Amazingly, given the press interest at the time (even making the front pages, as well as countless Murdoch media grumblepieces), I’ve not had one journo get in touch asking for my experience on it. They were delightfully printing how “an unnamed source told us Presenter #1 shouted at people in this meeting” and “another unnamed source told us Presenter #2 doesn’t share food and his favourite food is sandwiches”. I’m astounded that no one’s even bothered to get in touch to ask if any of it was true. Then again, who needs truth once the article’s out?

Ah, speaking of articles, that’s why I’m here.

Another thing I’ve been doing is writing a Christmas book. For a couple of years now, I’ve been researching and writing Hark! The Biography of Christmas – you can of course pre-order it by clicking on its title just there in the line above. Would you? Thanks.

It’s simply the history of Christmas, told via the 12 dates of when I think Christmas became a bit more like our modern version of it. The whole of Christmas is here: origins of crackers, tinsel, turkey, holly, White Christmas, panto, Scrooge, Santa, carols… Why we think of our Christmas as a snowy time (it’s to do with the ice age, the young Dickens and Frankenstein), a time for charity (it’s to do with Boxing Day, the older Dickens and Cornish tin mines), and a time for family (it’s to do with trains, Gotham City, and the word ‘knickers’). There is of course plenty of church (a Nativity with no donkey, no innkeeper and possible dozens of wise men) and plenty of commerce (the world’s first Santa’s grotto? East London). There’s even a farting jester, The Simpsons, Daphne Du Maurier’s scary dad, and Englebert Humperdinck (not that one).

In fact I don’t think there’s anything of Christmas I’ve left out. I’m waiting for someone to read it and tell me what’s missing.

To drip-feed Christmassy articles/extracts between now and Christmas. Festive delights a-plenty will follow in subsequent posts. For now, it’s still August, so I’ll have some respect for the season and not start till September. But come September 1st, the festive floodgates will open… and the blog’s going to be the Christmassiest place on the planet.

Hey Christians! Do you rhyme things? Do you write worship songs? If yes to both, then this article isn’t aimed at you. This is for the rhymers who aren’t full-timers. The amateur iambicquers. The poets who just won’t forego it.

Songwriters are allowed to rhyme. The Poet Laureate is allowed to rhyme. But outside of these spheres, the composition of natty slogans by matching a couple of syllables together does rankle somewhat, does it not.

Follow some of the Twitter faith-minded, and you might see the odd ode masquerading as a handy soundbite:

Don’t get me wrong. I love a ‘rap’ as much as the next chap. Sometimes in the realm of Marketing, a convenient soundalike can be helpful. But just remember it is Marketing speak. So yes, you might feel well smug that you’ve just summed up your entire theology/philosophy/raison d’etre in three bitesized words that roll off the tongue like water off a quack-hack’s back. Comic Relief have just been delivering ‘Funny For Money’ – that works, but again, it is marketing. And sometimes things that rhyme aren’t that simple. By its very nature, the rhyme reduces the idea, often to comic effect, as with comedic character L Vaughan Spencer’s “Don’t Be Needy, Be Succeedy” mantra.

I’m sure no Londoner can forget Philip Howard, the Scouse preacher that used to occupy the corner of Oxford Circus with his mini-megaphone. “Don’t be a sinner – be a winner!” he’d continually shout at shoppers, resting only for sleep and a glance at his rhymer’s dictionary. He’s been accused and cleared of harassing a passer-by (being a passer-harasser), and Westminster Council tried and failed to give him an Anti-Social Behaviour Order (so he has no ASBO).

I’ve got a soft spot for the walking talking London landmark, and certainly without his rhyme, he wouldn’t be in the consciousness as he currently is. Equally I can’t really argue with his sentiment: I’d rather be a winner than a sinner, as would I’m sure many of his passers-by. Unfortunately some have pointed out that another sentence that rhymes is: “Do be a sinner, and a winner.” So just because it rhymes, it doesn’t make it right.

I’d certainly echo that thought further to the right down the Christian spectrum. American church campaigns to “pray away the gay” leave me and many centrist or leftie believers feeling rather cold and wanting to put some distance between us and our fundie cousins. Yet they continue to peddle their leaflets to the gay community, offering to “sinister to the minister” and “convert the flirt”. The rhyme sugar-coats. It sounds a lot more user-friendly than “reprogram the homosexual”.

So be wary of what you’re being marketed under the guise of a rhyme. While some surely work and are accurate and nice and decent and speak to us, they’re all just out to sell us a point of view. And by all means, spread the good word. Reach out to different parts of the community. And if it helps you witness to West Country caravanners, then please do buy that bumper-sticker:

On the A303 and Devonbound? Make sure you’re heavenbound.

…If it aids your fish ministry, then print on your waders:

Salmon or perch? Hear a sermon in church.

…If it supports your blood-group-based testimony, then shout from the rooftops:

I’m Rhesus positive and Jesus positive!

…If it assists you taking your message to the upper-facial bronzing salon, then by all means:

Evangelise to the tan gel eyes.

It may rhyme to say, “Don’t be a sinner – be a winner”, but the same’s true of: “Don’t be a sinner – or a winner”, “Be a sinner and/or a winner” and “Don’t be a sinner – have Pot Noodle for dinner. It won’t make you thinner but oh look it’s Frank Skinner.”

This new blog was meant to be more jokey/funny/light ent. Instead the first proper post looks like being far from that, and instead attempting to tackle a current religious/cultural hot potato. Catch.

I feel compelled to write about this week’s gay marriage vote, because on Twitter and Facebook, almost all comments I saw on the issue were from non-Christians (or ‘nonks’, as I hope will catch on), mostly ribbing Christians for getting it wrong. As for the Christians? They were posting, but largely avoiding the elephant in the room and whistling or talking about the weather.

Some Christian tweeters were sticking their heads over the parapet. One or two were defending that marriage should be for a man and a woman, but feeling bad about it. A handful of Christians were at the other end of the spectrum (or ‘rainbow’ seems a more appropriate term), arguing that compassion and equality overrides everything for them.

In the middle, there are many Christians who don’t know what to think – or do know what they think but don’t know how to express it without being branded intolerant. The simplified expression you hear is ‘Adam & Eve, not Adam & Steve’, or the French version: ‘Adam & Eve, not Adam & Yves’, or the non-Christians biting back with ‘not Adam & Eve, or Adam & Steve, but dinosaurs’.

So where do I stand? Well I think… it’s none of my business. Who am I to judge what someone else does? I’ve tried looking at the what the Bible says about homosexuality, and some of the verses you can attribute to the culture at the time; others are a bit more clear-cut. I can’t reconcile that with the fact that, for me, Christianity is about compassion, love, and God’s-grace-for-all.

So it’s a mystery. Thankfully it’s not my job to unravel it. It’s none of our jobs. We don’t have to make the theology work. The only reason it’s relevant to even talk about it is because if the government are going to redefine marriage, the church needs to either support it or not.

Here’s the problem: Christians believe that God created marriage, and most will acknowledge that it was created between a man and a woman. But marriage took off in a big way, over the centuries, and so the church doesn’t own marriage. Marriage is above and beyond any organised religion, and in a fair, equal, democratic society, surely if a gay couple want the government to allow them to marry, then that should happen. Christianity’s teaching on respect, love and grace-for-all should surely mean we get behind that?

So government, make us all equal by all means, and while you’re at it, perhaps take over the legal aspects of marriage entirely. I’ve had a wedding, and the official side of it is, even at a church wedding, legalistic, time-consuming and not very romantic. Let’s give the government that bit to sort out, and then if a man and a woman want a church ceremony, they can have one, without even needing to step out and sign a register (no one’s favourite bit). If a man and man, or woman and woman want a ceremony too, some churches will offer them, and bless them, and adapt the liturgy so they’re not preaching all the biblical man/woman stuff.

I heard one vicar say that if he’s forced to conduct a gay wedding, he will, but he’ll still get to choose the sermon, and he’ll preach his little heart out about the wrongs of homosexuality. It hardly sounds charitable, but my advice (and I guess his) would be: get married somewhere else. But do get married. When I grew up, the stereotype of gay relationships was, to be honest, a bit sordid – all parks, public loos and personal ads. Surely we should encourage marriage. It’s a Good Thing, and a lot less chilly than parks.

The Bible’s pretty clear on homosexual sex – it’s not a fan – but equally it’s not a fan of a lot of things that I do in my life, and I’m delighted to say that all of those things are nobody’s business but mine, just as what a gay couple get up to is nobody’s business but theirs.

So let marriage by for all, I say. It’s not about ‘Adam & Eve’, or ‘Adam & Steve’, or ‘Madam & Eve’. Life, as I see it, is about ‘Adam & God’. The rest is just window-dressing.